‘The Bridges of Madison County’ Broadway Reviews

The Bridges of Madison County takes us deep into the heart of our country and tells the very moving story of a beautiful young woman leaving Italy and suddenly living in Iowa… and her joyful discovery of love.

NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW

““Iowa.” When Kelli O’Hara sings that word, a plain place name becomes a prism of rippling ambivalence. Portraying an Italian war bride transplanted to the middle of America, Ms. O’Hara finds a breathtaking sweep of feelings within the iteration of those three small syllables. “Iowa,” she sings, in the number that begins the new musical “The Bridges of Madison County,” and you hear both the heady hope of liberation and the hopeless acceptance of captivity.”

NEW YORK POST REVIEW

“The show really belongs to Francesca, whose songs brilliantly mix a sense of intimacy with near-operatic grandeur. This is perfectly encapsulated in the expository opening number, “To Build a Home,” in which she tells us how she ended up in Iowa as we see her house take shape onstage. If there is an affair to remember here, it’s the enduring one between O’Hara and the audience.”

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS REVIEW

“Robert James Waller’s 1992 romantic best-seller “The Bridges of Madison County” and the Meryl Streep-Clint Eastwood movie it spawned struck many as sappy — but Broadway’s lush musical version is grown-up and plain old-fashioned beautiful. The stage adaptation by Jason Robert Brown (“Parade”) and Marsha Norman (“’night Mother”) is a familiar, yet stylish tale that earns its tears. And it’s never sappy.”

ASSOCIATED PRESS REVIEW

“TThe Iowa featured in the new musical “The Bridges of Madison County” is flat indeed but, oh boy, the voices soar. Kelli O’Hara and Steven Pasquale come just short of blowing the roof off the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre in this touching doomed romance that features a superb, thrilling score by Jason Robert Brown. Brown, the talented composer behind “13,” ”The Last Five Years” and “Parade,” has never had a real New York hit. This should be it.”

The Bridges of Madison County takes us deep into the heart of our country and tells the very moving story of a beautiful young woman leaving Italy and suddenly living in Iowa… and her joyful discovery of love.